Senior Director Global Connectivity

About the position

The Senior Director, Connectivity is a senior technology leader responsible for shaping the strategy, architecture, and delivery of enterprise connectivity services across GSK's global footprint. This includes wide area networks (WAN), local networks (LAN/Wi-Fi), cloud and data center connectivity and network security. This role ensures that network and connectivity capabilities are secure, modern, and aligned to business needs, enabling seamless collaboration, cloud adoption, and digital innovation across R D, manufacturing, commercial, and corporate functions. The Senior Director plays a critical role in ensuring reliability, performance, and continuous improvement of connectivity services.

Responsibilities

• Develop and drive the global connectivity strategy and architecture, aligned with enterprise goals, security requirements and the broader digital agenda.
• Serve as the accountable owner for enterprise connectivity platforms, guiding design, performance expectations, lifecycle planning, and innovation.
• Collaborate closely with Operations & SRE teams to ensure resilient, secure, and well-managed connectivity services.
• Contribute to service reliability through proactive design, standards, and vendor management.
• Lead, cultivate and mentor a high-performing global team of network architects, engineers, and platform owners.
• Drive modernization of network technologies, including cloud-native networking, zero trust access, and edge connectivity.
• Oversee strategic vendors and partners to ensure delivery excellence and ongoing cost/value optimization.
• Ensure connectivity services are aligned with cybersecurity policies, privacy standards (e.g., GDPR), and regulatory compliance requirements (e.g., GxP).
• Own the connectivity services budget, including forecasting, investment planning, and cost optimization.
• Partner with stakeholders to ensure connectivity services meet evolving business and technical needs.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree (BA/BS) in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent technical qualification with relevant experience.
• 15+ years of experience in networking, with 10+ years in a senior leadership role.
• Experience in enterprise network technologies including Route/Switch, Wi-Fi, cloud networking, DNS/DHCP/IPAM, Firewalls, Zero Trust, WAF, Load Balancing, Datacenter, SDWAN, and other associated technologies.
• Experience with modern software engineering practices and cloud-centric infrastructure.
• Experienced in NetDevOps, DevSecOps practices to deliver network services through code and automation leveraging tools like Ansible, Puppet, Python etc.
• Experience leading tactical and strategic planning, to execute large scale transformation initiatives across a global, matrixed organization.
• Experience in managing relationships with multiple vendors, leading negotiations and managing contractual governance.
• Experience with network observability and monitoring tools like (Solarwinds, Netflow, SevOne, Netbrain) and best practices.
• Experience in implementation and maturity of Zero Trust models in a production environment.
• Leadership experience with managing service delivery to conform to ITIL defined practices.
• Experience leading and building global matrixed teams.
• Management experience with matrixed multi-functional teams located globally.
• Experience with agile delivery methodologies and product-based operating models.

Nice-to-haves

• Five years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with a solid understanding of its technological trends.
• Experience in a regulated environment, preferably pharmaceutical or life sciences.
• Relevant technical certifications (e.g., CCNP, CCIE, Azure/GCP networking).
• Passionate about enhancing customer experience.
• Self-starter with a sense of urgency and the ability to handle multiple high-priority work demands simultaneously in an outcome-driven organization.
• Leadership skills with the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with diverse audiences across various technical disciplines and job levels to achieve results.